SPN-Fanfiction - The trouble with forgiving
by spnfanfromeurope
Summary: Can you forgive me? That's the big question asked here. Warning: spoilers for s15e11! Watch first, then read. This is an extra scene inserted between two of the last scenes of the episode. Written before s15e13 aired (wish I had waited, the idea fits in perfectly at the end of that episode. Oh, well) TW: harsh consensual spankings, with a belt and a switch. No sex, smut or ships.


When Jack stepped out from behind the pillar, lifted his hand and said "Hello", Cas thought his heart would shatter with fear.  
How would they react, Sam and Dean?  
There was so much pain in the past, so much wrong done, and not only by Jack.  
But despite everything, Cas still thought of Jack as his son, and he held his breath, hoping that he would walk out of this meeting whole.

Sam was the first to approach.  
He just pulled Jack into a bearhug, and held him close.

Dean moved slower, more cautiously. He grabbed Jack by the neck and stared into his eyes, searching.  
He looked over at Cas and saw the naked fear mingled with hope in those blue eyes.  
He had blown out the light in those eyes in the past. Seen it die. More than once. And despite everything, he had been forgiven. Again, and again. It wasn't even that long ago, the last time.  
When he finally apologized, not even face to face, but in desperate prayer, thinking Cas might already have died, he was forgiven, just like that.

He looked away from the blue lights and pulled Jack into a hug.  
But when Jack's arms came around his waist, he felt anger stir and swell in his chest – and as the anger broke its chain and rose in an inevitable wave, up, up, up, he leaned back, pushing Jack out at arm's length.

Jack looked up in surprise and in the green of Dean's eyes, he saw the change. He had never seen something snap behind another person's eyes before, and it was absolutely terrifying. But before he had time to think, or react, Dean's fist crashed into his left cheek.  
Jack lost his balance and would have fallen, if Cas hadn't caught his arm.

"It's ok," Dean heard Jack say, as he felt Sam drag him backwards, out of range, "He can hit me, if he wants to. I deserve as much, after everything I've done."  
"No." Sam answered, simply. "He can't. No punching. Remember?"

Cas carefully put himself between Jack and the two brothers, but the protective gesture went unnoticed. The two men were focused on each other.  
Sam sighed.  
"Dean. You have got to get that anger under control. We agreed on this."  
"I know. Sorry, Sam."  
"Dammit, Dean. I told you last time, what I would do, if you ever did that again. And you know, I don't want to have to do that."  
Dean's face slowly lost all color. He sank something and there was a long silence, then he said quietly, "I'm sorry, Sammy."

After that, he simply turned and walked out of the bunker.

Sam ran a hand through his hair, shook his head and faced the two spectators.  
He looked at Jack searchingly. Then at Cas.  
"What now?" he asked. "Do you really feel, you need to be punished? You should know, I for one, has forgiven you a long time ago. We're square."

Jack shook his head. His father was Lucifer, who was the original fallen angel, and his real father was an angel, who didn't so much fall as choose to jump. The idea of sin, punishment and forgiveness was imbedded in his very DNA and this? This easy forgiveness from Sam was too… well, too easy, for him. It didn't feel right.

Dean was walking through the door as Jack squared his shoulders and calmly asked for his punishment.  
Sam put his big hand on Jack's shoulder and squeezed gently.  
"Ok, then."  
Jack swallowed and forced a smile.

Then his eyes caught sight of what Dean had brought in, and he took a deep breath.  
Sam looked to see where Jack's eyes had gone and shook his head.

"No, that's not for you. Dean won't be the one to punish you."  
Dean rumbled his agreement quietly, "Lost that right, when I threw the punch. Sorry about that, by the way."  
Jack just nodded and looked from Cas to Sam and back again.  
Cas took a step forward.  
"I'll take care of it."

Sam shook his head with an appreciative smile.  
"Nah, it's ok. I'll do it. You had to do it the last time, back with the soul magic. I guess it's about my turn now."

Then he turned to his brother and took the switch out of his hand. He used it to point at the chair on the other side of the table.  
"Sit down, Dean."  
"You'll keep me waiting for it, Sammy?"  
"Yep. Sit."

Dean obeyed wordlessly. Not point in arguing. He recognized that his not-so-little-brother had switched into that place in his mind, where he went whenever he had to be the disciplinarian. "Channeling his inner John Winchester" Dean had called it once and gotten growled at in response.

Sam thunked the switch down in the middle of the table, moved the chair across from Dean out of the way, reached back, without even looking, to grab Jack by the collar and drag him over to the now empty spot.  
"Drop them and bend over," he said calmly.  
As always unfazed by his own state of dress or undress, Jack simply did as he was told.

Sam looked at Dean while he opened his belt buckle and pulled his broad, worn, brown leather belt free.  
"Dean, put your hands on the switch. No, palms up. Thank you. Jack, put your hands, palms up, on top of Dean's, and don't you dare get up. Dean, you can help him with that or not. If he gets up, I'll start over."

Dean's hands closed around Jack's just as the belt landed with a loud smack right at the thin skin at the top of Jack's thighs.  
The blow knocked his hips into the table and the breath out of his lungs.

After that everything became a tumble of disjointed images and sounds, separated by the fire Sam thudded into his ass and thighs. He turned his hands and clung to Dean's desperately, feeling the steady pressure given back, holding him grounded.

Usually Sam tended to approach a spanking with a certain methodical rhythm, often interspersed with questions that he insisted be answered. This time he spanked more like Dean usually did: Fast, hard and erratically.

Jack felt the world whirl.  
Unable to guess when or where the next smack would land, he felt adrift with only Dean's hands anchoring him.  
At one point, Sam landed the belt at the exact same spot three times in a row, and when the fourth landed in the same place, Jack broke.  
He pulled his right hand out of Dean's grip and slung it back. Sam caught it in the air, pinned it effortlessly to the small of his back, and grimly landed the belt on that same spot again, before moving to the goddamn thin skin at the top of the thighs.  
Jack twisted his head, pressed his face into his left biceps and sobbed.  
After a while, awash in a sea of pain, he felt a warm hand on his sweaty neck, and knew it was Dean's.

Dimly he heard Dean's deep voice:  
"Sammy, stop, please. It's enough. He's had enough, please. Stop."  
Sam glanced at Dean, and then he slammed the belt across the middle of Jack's thighs once, twice, three times. Jack let out a strangled sob and went limb.  
Dean felt it through his hand on Jack's neck and half rose to catch the boy, just as Sam let go of the belt to grip Jack under the arms. He gently helped the kid find his feet and pulled him into a hug just as Dean came around the table to grab him from the other side.  
Buried in a double hug between two giants, Jack finally felt the knot of guilt inside loosen.

When the brothers backed away, he looked hopefully from one to the other, his eyes asking the question.  
Sam smiled at him: "I already told you. I've forgiven you. I know what soullessness does to a person. I forgive you."

Dean frowned. Then he said carefully: "I'm sorry. I'm not quite there yet. But I'm trying. I can't forget, but I'm starting to forgive, and I promise, I'll keep trying."  
Jack nodded with his usual seriousness and took a deep breath. Then he finally remembered his state of undress and gingerly pulled his clothes back up over the soreness that had been his backside a few minutes ago.

Cas was pulling Jack into a hug when Sam sighed again and turned to Dean.  
"Let's get it over with. Take your jacket and shirt off."

Cas's head rose from the hug and turned quickly to Sam.  
While Dean undressed, Sam put a hand on Jack's shoulder.  
"I would like you to help me for a moment, Jack."

Jack looked questioningly at Sam, and nodded, always willing to be of help, if he could.

Dean knelt on the floor behind Sam and lifted his hands, palm up.  
At Sam's directions, Jack knelt in front of Dean, and put his hands under Dean's.  
Both men looked down at their connected hands, Jack's smaller hands completely covered by Dean's.  
Sam picked up the switch and turned to them.

"I know you hate this Dean. I know how hard it is for you to hold still. So. Here's the deal. You can move your hands, if you have to, but then I'm gonna hit Jack's instead, I won't be able to avoid it."

Cas bit his tongue, hard. He hadn't expected Sam to come up with such a nefarious idea. But it would work. Dean's built-in protectiveness would be triggered, and that would not only prompt him to endure what looked to be a most painful ordeal but would also push him another step on the road to forgiving Jack.  
Like an old experienced farmer bringing a dog into the sheep stable to get a reluctant mother ewe to go all protective over her hitherto unwanted lamb. It often works surprisingly well.

Dean nodded and closed his eyes. For once, Sam let him, he knew it was easier, when you didn't have to see it coming.

Aware of the level of damage a switch could do to a hand, Sam was careful.  
He left two burning welts across each palm. One on the tough skin just below the joints to the fingers and one at the base of the palm, and for the first time in his life, Dean took four blows to his hands without moving a muscle, except for his jaw tensing up.

The next three lashes to each side was given, not across the hands, but over the wrist and lower arms, carefully aimed.  
When they were done, Sam was sweating with concentration and Dean was shaking all over, tears seeping out from under his still closed eyes.

"Six with a switch to each hand," Sam had said the last time he'd had to deal with Dean punching family.  
He hadn't expected to have to follow up on that threat. Family had gotten to be real small again, and there hadn't been much hope of any kind of future, there still wasn't, but at least the family had grown back to four now.  
Sam gritted his teeth and swished the willow down for the last time, a crosswise stroke, that landed diagonally across both his brother's palms at the same time.  
Dean gasped and swayed, eyes flying open, dark with pain. He ripped his hands towards himself, then quickly scrambled to put them back into position.  
But Sam broke the switch in half and threw it across the room, before he dropped to his knees next to his big brother and pulled him into his arms.

No-one said anything. Cas had long had his back turned, unable to watch, his fists white-knuckled.

Jack quietly moved away and got to his feet, a little unsteadily.

When Sam finally helped Dean to his feet, Cas broke the silence with determination:  
"Ok. Everybody: go to your rooms and do whatever you need to get yourselves together. Wash up or whatever. We'll meet in the kitchen in fifteen minutes for a beer and a talk. Jack has a lot he needs to tell us."


End file.
